So What Is Ogopogo?

Many people have given eyewitness accounts of seeing Ogopogo rise from Okanagan Lake. If it is not their imagination playing tricks on them, what could it be? The simplest explanation is that people have seen a “disappearing wave.” Although the water is smooth, and there is no wind and no boat in sight, a rolling wave can appear that is 25 - 30 feet long. It moves swiftly forward, and then it disappears. This wave can be the late appearance of waves generated by a boat. These waves are like echoes. They appear long after the boat has moved off. Or the sighting may be a “rogue wave”, which is a large wave in a group of smaller waves. Maybe Ogopogo’s humps are only waves after all.

Psychologists suggest that the way the brain works can explain the sighting of a lake monster. When we see something in the distance, the details are incomplete. The brain fills in what is missing. That way we can make sense of what we see. This phenomenon happens, for example, when we are driving along a straight highway. What looks like a hitchhiker in the distance turns out to be only a bag of garbage or a tilting signpost when we get closer to it. Our brain does not like what it cannot explain. It supplies the details, even if they are incorrect, to make the object into something we can recognize. We expect to see hitchhikers by the side of the road. Perhaps when people expect to see Ogopogo, the brain makes sure that they do.